Oh, dear. What in tarnation is this thing? From the deepest recess of Facebook Marketplace comes this very, very original, 1951 Willys-Overland "Jeepster". You don't see these every day, even at Jeep-centric shows, and you didn't see many when new either as only about 20,000 were sold from 1948 through 1950; 1951 models were actually left over 1950 models.
The Willys-Overland Corporation built more than 300,000 government issue Jeeps during World War II but like many G.I,'s, struggled to adapt to civilian life after hostilities ended. They did have some success building utilitarian wagons, trucks and "CJ's" or "civilian jeeps", but they struggled to find buyers for their, umm, "car", they called "Jeepster".
There were several problems with the Jeepster aside from its love it or run from it screaming design. First off, available only as a convertible, they were more expensive and not as well as equipped as convertibles from Ford and Chevrolet.
Although they were built on Willys-Overland station wagon chassis, which was available with all-wheel-drive, Jeepsters only came with rear-wheel-drive. Jeepster's primitive and weak four- and six-cylinder engines didn't provide much in the way of performance either. Our Marketplace find here has the 134-CID , "Go Devil", 63-horsepower, inline-4.
While technically the world's first crossover utility, since the virtues of everything put into it were compromised, there wasn't much the Jeepster could actually do.
Then, again, there's the matter of the Jeepster's, "styling".
Willys-Overland lacked the tooling to make proper car bodies so body panels of all their vehicles were made by metal fabricators. The simple, industrial, some would say ruggedly charming design of Jeeps may have worked well on more practical applications but when it came to automobiles, where design whimsy is so important, the grass roots-ness aesthetic didn't work.
Willys-Overland, by the way, Willys is pronounced "Willis", was swallowed up by the Kaiser corporation in 1953; the company was renamed Kaiser-Jeep in 1963. Kasier, in turn, became part of American Motors in 1970, AMC was bought out in 1987 by Chrysler who tossed their cars and held onto the Jeep brand.
From 1966-1973, Kaiser-Jeep and then AMC built a Jeepster-Commando (1971 above) that had many of the design elements (quirks) of the original. Big difference was those quirks were designed in rather than by necessity. To me, at least, it makes for a less authentic whatever it was the Jeepster was originally intended to be. Then again, I'm not a truck or Jeep gal so take my two-cent opinion for what it's worth.
Poster of the ad is asking $1,500 which seems refreshingly fair.
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